Unlocking Employee Engagement: How to Share Survey Results Effectively

How do you share employee engagement survey results in a way that gets people to act on them?

You've spent weeks running an organization-wide survey, and now the results are in.

But as an HR professional, you've also got meetings, emails and the usual requests coming in, so the results sit untouched for 2 weeks.

Then you skim the data, pick out a few points and use them to set initiatives for the year.

That's a lot to ask of a quick read. You may miss a response that points to a problem employees have been dealing with for months.

Sharing the results gives people a chance to understand what you heard and what you plan to do about it.

Here's how to set goals for that conversation, communicate the findings clearly and keep checking in after the first round of changes.

Defining objectives and goals

Before you share your employee engagement survey results, take a moment to clarify your top objectives.

Employee engagement surveys help you do several things, including:

• Identify company-wide bottlenecks
• Recognize what energizes your teams
• Understand how well your leaders are communicating
• Uncover any concerns about inclusivity and fairness

When you have well-defined objectives, it's easier to parse survey data and interpret it in a way that aligns with your company's ambitions. It also helps you focus, so you're not trying to "do it all".

If, for example, your top priority is improving leadership development or enhancing cross-functional collaboration, your interpretation of survey results will focus on these areas.

It also allows you to decide which audiences to share the results with, in case certain groups want to hear the results in more detail.

Understanding your survey's objectives and goals also gives you the power to align this data with your organization's larger goals.

If your company's goal is to build a stronger culture of innovation, survey data that speaks to employees' feelings about risk-taking or autonomy will be an excellent way to kickstart change.

Establishing an action plan

When you're analyzing your employee engagement survey results, think about the objective as a playbook that guides you on how to turn this data into real, measurable improvements.

One useful approach is to use the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). Each of your planned initiatives should fit into these criteria. This keeps your objectives focused and purposeful.

For instance, if your objective is to improve how managers give feedback, your action plan might focus on a pilot program that trains managers on more effective feedback techniques and then measures how consistently they apply these new skills.

You can also make your action plans stronger by incorporating established organizational psychology frameworks. Self-Determination Theory, for example, highlights the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key motivators.

If your survey data suggests that employees feel they lack autonomy in their decision-making, you can create an action plan that focuses on increasing delegated decision-making power or introducing peer-to-peer coaching.

Finally, an action plan helps you hold your organization accountable. If each step is clearly documented, it's obvious who is responsible for what, what resources are required, and how success will be defined. This ensures that things don't slip through the cracks and that there are timely check-ins.

Setting priorities

When you analyze your survey data, you may find several topics or pain points to address, such as career growth, recognition, team morale, and leadership communication. Trying to tackle everything at once will lead to a lack of focus.

Your priorities will help you apply a filter to this list of possibilities. You can focus on areas that have the highest impact or are most time sensitive and deserving of immediate attention.

How do you determine what deserves priority?

You can look at how urgent an issue is, how many employees it impacts, and how much potential it has for impact on the business. Some problems may be very urgent, because they affect a large percentage of employees.

At the same time, there may be issues that are less widespread but have the potential to significantly impact key business processes. You can use these considerations to map out a path that leads to meaningful wins in the near term.

You should also consider interdependencies.

Often, addressing a root issue (e.g., inefficient communication channels) has a cascading effect that leads to improvements in many other areas.

Identifying stakeholders

Your stakeholders are not just senior executives. They are anyone who has influence over or is impacted by your survey results. This can be everyone from C-suite champions to line managers to employees on the front lines.

Mapping out your stakeholders early leads to a more inclusive process.

It also allows you to share the responsibility and lessen the burden on HR. Having different champions for your various initiatives helps you become co-creators, rather than just executors.

Whether it's a department head that helps set new norms for their team or a group of engaged employees that act as a pilot for a mentorship initiative, stakeholders bring energy and drive to the commitments laid out in your action plan. Identifying stakeholders also clarifies the communication lines.

Perhaps different communication points are needed for different groups.

Developing a timeline

You want to keep the energy around your engagement results from fizzling out. A helpful way to do this is to break your plan into milestones and set a realistic timeline for achieving them.

Setting short-term wins empowers you to demonstrate progress and prove that things are happening, leading to positive momentum.

A timeline is also a way to create accountability.

By giving each milestone a deadline and an assigned owner, you set clear expectations for everyone involved. This allows leaders to check in on progress, employees to expect updates, and the entire organization to witness slow but steady improvements over time.

You can also align your timeline to existing organizational cycles (e.g. quarterly business review) to more deeply ingrain your engagement initiatives into broader practices.

How to communicate employee engagement survey results

Thank employees for participating

When your employees take an engagement survey, they're graciously offering their experience and perspective with the hope that things will change. Thanking them for this shows that you appreciate their efforts and validates that their time was not wasted.

When you thank your employees for taking your employee engagement survey, remind them that their feedback is a crucial input for shaping your organization's future.

Provide an initial overview of results

Give your employees a general overview of the results before diving into specific details. This overview might be something like: "90% of respondents feel motivated by our organizational mission".

It might be something like, "Many of you have highlighted the need for better knowledge-sharing platforms".

There are a few psychological benefits to providing a general overview first. It helps your employees find their place within the larger organizational picture.

They can see whether their experience aligns with the experiences of their colleagues or if certain pieces of feedback are unique to their group.

Analyze results with leadership

Before distributing the detailed survey results, review your survey findings with leadership teams. Getting executives aligned early is crucial for understanding whether you have the resources needed to act on the survey results or if there will be roadblocks.

When you do share the results with your larger workforce, you'll know that your senior leaders plan to champion your upcoming initiatives. You'll also have secured their commitment to undertaking a survey project.

This is also an opportunity to get leaders' insights on how specific survey results can be tied to larger strategic objectives.

If your survey results show that employees want more opportunities for innovation, your leaders may already be planning to ramp up their innovation initiatives and eager for fresh ideas.

Announce detailed results

Once you've secured leadership buy-in, it's time to share your detailed results. Dive into details by sharing specific metrics or themes and insights by department, if applicable and appropriate.

Invite your employees to ask questions or raise concerns. Give them an opportunity to ask how you drew specific conclusions or why there are differences based on department.

At this point, you can also share your intended next steps based on the results of your engagement survey.

Discuss team-level results within teams

Teams will also want to know how the organization-wide themes apply to them. For instance, the high-level result might have been "Company-wide employees want clearer career growth paths." But there are different nuances in individual departments.

You can encourage managers to hold open forums where employees can discuss the survey data specific to their team.

This creates psychological safety and gives teams the chance to brainstorm specific actions they can take.

It also makes it clear that while there may be organization-wide initiatives, each team will have the capacity to adapt these strategies to their own unique challenges. These conversations can take the form of small breakout discussions or anonymous polls if there are employees who are uncomfortable sharing their opinion.

When teams co-create solutions, they become more accountable and supportive of the implementation.

Communication tips for sharing employee engagement survey results

Be transparent

Transparency reduces ambiguity and rumour, and protects your credibility.

If your organization cherry-picks the positive highlights and downplays the legitimate negative concerns, your employees will sense a lack of candor.

This will erode trust and lead to disengagement with future feedback opportunities.

Instead, face the challenges head-on.

That said, you don't necessarily want to focus on every little complaint or problem. Instead, focus on the broader themes that arise. The key is to demonstrate that you're not avoiding difficult topics.

Respect your employees' responses

Every piece of feedback is based on your employees' real experiences. Whether they align with your leadership team's perceptions or not, it's important to respect them.

This means that if your employees deliver surprising or critical feedback, your organization must respond with humility.

Show that you respect your employees' viewpoints and want to understand them. You can do this by reinforcing how you protected their anonymity to remind them that their honesty will lead to constructive follow-through, not punitive actions.

Encourage employee participation

To create a sense of collective ownership, encourage employees to be active contributors to the solution.

Instead of presenting a plan where employees have no say, invite them to propose ideas or volunteer for pilot programs.

For instance, if the results show that employees want more flexible working arrangements, consider bringing a committee together to explore different models.

This kind of inclusive approach can spur energy and creativity.

Often, frontline employees have deep insights about their day-to-day tasks. Involving them helps dispel the notion that improving employee engagement is strictly an HR department initiative.

Collect feedback regularly

Employee engagement is not a static state. Market shifts, organizational changes, and new leadership can affect how people feel about their work.

Measuring employee engagement through a single survey is a one-and-done approach. Instead, you want to regularly measure and communicate your results to create a feedback and improvement loop.

Plus, shorter, pulse-style surveys keep leadership informed of changing sentiments and allow for quicker strategy adjustments.

Regular feedback cycles create a sense of an ongoing conversation among your employees. And if you regularly close the loop by explaining how you're turning feedback into specific actions, the process gains more trust over time.

Keep on surveying and improving employee engagement

Once you've shared your results, do not simply put your engagement initiative on the back burner. Instead, stay engaged with different groups to understand how well your interventions are working.

For instance, if you rolled out a new training program in response to a particular theme, you'll want to continue gathering feedback to see if it's meeting its objectives.

In addition to formal surveys, there are other ways your organization can listen to employees. For example, using focus groups or one-on-one conversations is another great way to collect feedback.

Sparkbay's method, for example, uses a combination of advanced analytics and proven theories to turn employee feedback into actionable insights.

Employee engagement is also affected by factors that are not directly related to job tasks. Workplace friendships, psychological safety, opportunities to learn, and alignment with the company's overall purpose all have an impact on how engaged employees are.

Regular surveys help your company monitor these components. And when your company acts on them, it should take a holistic approach that connects every step back to its strategic vision.

How does improving employee engagement over time fit into your larger initiatives? It could be diversity and inclusion, leadership development, or even innovation initiatives.

For instance, an inclusive environment could increase employees' sense of belonging. A structured leadership development program could ease employees' concerns about career progression.

Final thoughts

When employees see that the feedback loop completes and leads to real changes in their work conditions, they're more eager to re-engage. This cycle of feedback and action is beneficial in many ways.

It leads to improvements that are incorporated into your processes, an increase in employee morale, and greater employee loyalty. Over time, an engaged workforce gives your business a significant competitive advantage.

Your employee surveys can identify positive examples of managerial support, inclusive team culture, or helpful communication pathways. Recognizing these successes, in addition to focusing on challenges, reinforces positive behaviors and gives teams the motivation to continue.

If you're interested in learning how Sparkbay can help you build a more engaged workforce, you can click here for a demo.

If you're interested in learning how Sparkbay can help you build a more engaged workforce, you can click here for a demo.